The Short Form Competition Category II

A Woman Alone | La Femme Seule | Brahim Fritah | France | 2005 | 24 min.
A young black woman folds a small turban that enables her to carry heavy loads on her head. When only a child, Legba Akosse was abandoned by her father. Although she doesn't bear any grudges – he's still her father – her life has been marked by solitude. She was forced to look after herself from an early age. One day, like many of her compatriots, she decided to go to France, seeking a better future. When a married African couple took her into their home, Legba considered it a good omen. As soon as the doors of the luxury flat closed behind her, however, her new employer took her passport and all her other personal documents. During the two years that followed she took care of two children and kept the flat tidy without receiving a penny in return. With no money and no documents, the doors of her prison remained firmly locked and she had no means of escape. Brahim Fritah employed an interesting technique in reconstructing Legba's story. Using static close–ups of a typical nouveau riche apartment in Paris, only rarely panning across, he evokes the morbid atmosphere that Legba experienced for two entire years of her life.

The Clown Children | Klovnebarna | Jannicke Systad Jacobsen | Norway | 2005 | 7 min.
Thirty–one year–old Jannicke Systad Jacobsen initially studied directing at the Prague Film School (FAMU) and then in London. This short film was made at Oslo University, however, where she is currently studying drama and social anthropology. From the first minutes, it is obvious that she is adept at finding a level of drama even within ordinary day–to–day events. Two small boys are changing into clown costumes behind an iron fence on one of Guatemala City's busy intersections. Come rain or shine, a day just like any other lies ahead. As soon as the traffic lights go red, the two boys start juggling with oranges and, before they turn green, they walk around the two first rows of dusty cars, picking up a few coins that will buy them dinner in town that evening. Judging by the number of wound–down car windows and outstretched arms holding coins, the town is full of child clowns like these two. Avoiding overt sentimentality, Jacobsen allows the audience to empathise with her subjects.

A Bridge Over the Drina | Le Pont sur la Drina | Xavier Lukomski | Belgium | 2005 | 18 min.
The Bridge On the Drina (1945) is a book by Nobel Prize laureate Ivo Andric describing the long, conflict–ridden history of the region around the small town of Visegrad in eastern Bosnia. Taking the book as a leitmotif, director Xavier Lukomski combined a fixed image of the bridge and the river Drina with a recording of the testimony of Visegrad resident Poljo Mevsud given to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on September 17 and 18, 2001. While Mevsud recounts the harrowing story of how he and several others pulled floating dead bodies from the Drina during the war in Bosnia, we see only the bridge at different times of the day, the light changing ever so slightly. Working at night and in the early morning because of shelling, the men retrieved approximately 180 bodies from the river over a period of three months in order to give them a proper and decent burial. "It was the least we could do," Mevsud says, and calmly answers the tribunal's questions about the condition of the bodies, giving details of signs of abuse or mutilation. Throughout the film, the bridge stands above the river in its own silent testimony.

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